Are you required to submit an identity essay as part of your college or university admission application? Cultural identity essay is an academic assignment not just for students who want to start higher education but also for those in their first, second, or even third year.
It’s an essay that can be assigned at any academic level. This academic paper is popular because professors want to know more about the student’s personal life to build rapport. Before you start writing the essay, it’s essential first to understand the definition of cultural identity.
What is Cultural Identity?
It’s what you identify with or feel most that you belong to based on heritage, religion, traditions, language, rituals, ethnicity, social class, and other community norms. Your cultural identity can influence how you react or interpret the world around you and give you a sense of belonging. Therefore, before you embark on the writing process, first ask yourself, “what is my cultural identity?” or what is cultural identity in your own words?
Your answers will go a long way in helping you learn more about your roots, strength, strong beliefs, and influences that have shaped who you are today. Besides, thinking through the answers to those two questions helps you to come up with main points to use in an essay and share your identity perceptions.
What is a Cultural Identity Essay?
A well-written cultural identity essay tells the reader how your culture has shaped who you are, your personality, beliefs, outlook, background, and point of view. It’s more like a mini-biography but focuses more on your culture and its peculiarities.
Since cultural identity is a broad topic, there are numerous angles you can focus on to make your essay fascinating from start to finish. For example, you can talk about rituals or unique cultural events that have influenced your personality, a special location, influential people in your community, or racial stereotypes in the USA.
Cultural Identity Essay Structure
Like any other academic paper, a cultural identity essay structure will be composed of three crucial components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Writing in the first person is recommended, especially when including emotions, feelings, and personal experience. However, if you’re writing a short story or analyzing Jane Collier and Milt Thomas's theory, you can write the essay in the third person.
How to Write a Cultural Identity Essay
If it’s your first time writing a cultural identity essay, you might have difficulties writing text that meets academic standards. The wide array of information available online can be confusing. However, a well-written cultural identity essay example from our writer and the information provided in this post can be an excellent guide. Hers how to write a good cultural identity essay.
Start with Topic Selection
How do you start a cultural identity essay? The first step to writing a quality cultural identity paper is to choose a specific focus area. If you intend to talk about your culture, then good topic examples would be:
- Influential people in your community
- Habits that are inherent only to your culture
- Specific cuisine that tells about your culture
- How cultural orientation has affected your self-concept
- A place of significance that tells about your culture
- Cultural significance in art and how it influenced your personality
- Self-awareness and cultural identity
- Specific ingredients and traditional foods from your region
- A specific cultural event that influenced your personality
- How your cultural orientation and characteristics facilitate or hinder social competency in a multicultural setting
In case you don’t want to write about yourself, you can focus on how culture relates to education, politics, ethnicity, nationality, religion, social status, or any other unique factor. Some topic examples include:
- Cultural identity and health equity
- Cultural identity in a learning environment
- Evaluating Cultural Identity Using Caryl Phillips Cambridge
- Cultural identity and globalization
- The role of language in building cultural identity
- The position of cultural identity in society
- Racial stereotypes in America
- Cultural identity development in ethnic minority
- Sexuality, gender, and cultural identity
- Cultural difference between America and China
- Impact of culture identity change on family
After getting a good topic, the next step is to develop a thesis statement that focuses on the paper. Next, create an outline. This involves coming up with several main points that you will include in your essay. Ensure they are relevant to the topic. Then assign each point to a specific paragraph.
Write the Introduction
Start with a sentence that will catch the reader’s attention (hook). Follow that up with background information on the topic, then end the introduction with a thesis statement. The first paragraph is a vital part of your cultural identity essay since it tells the reader why that topic is important to you and how it made you the person you are today. Remember, the introduction is only meant to introduce the topic and not really everything. So keep it brief; not more than 10% of the maximum word count.
Main Body of a Cultural Identity Essay
Present your analysis in this part of the essay. Since this will be the bulky part of your paper, use it to prove your thesis by showing how the events or what you are talking about shaped your cultural identity. Don’t forget to start each paragraph with a topic sentence and show instead of telling. Present the evidence while keeping the thesis statement in mind.
Conclusion
Remember the main points you used to create an outline, summarize them, and then paraphrase the thesis to wrap up the essay. Remind the reader how your culture has influenced your personality. Use words that express the emotions you have about your cultural identity. Overall, the last paragraph of a cultural identity essay should paraphrase the meaning of cultural identity in your own words and its impact on you.
Bottom Line
Are you still having trouble coming up with a good topic to write about? If you have been staring at a blank page for hours wondering, “How can I explain my cultural identity?” there is a solution. Acemyhomework has subject experts that are ready to assist you.
Just give the writer the information to incorporate, and you shall have a high-quality cultural identity essay within the agreed deadline. Students from all academic levels have benefited immensely from our service and reading our identity essay examples. Contact us now and let us create a paper that will boost your academic performance.